Collaboration systems have been known in the current art for some time. The intent is to bring multiple users together to perform workflows such as but not limited to brainstorming, process improvement, and other information management sessions. There has been significant effort to transition these sessions from an analog format, such as sticky notes or white boarding, into a digital workspace with all the improvements that digital has, such as persistent storage and remote user participation.
As systems have grown more complex and the number of in-room users has increased, the complexity of inputting information into multiuser collaboration workspaces has increased as the systems have increased. With increased complexity, the users of these systems typically experience longer and inefficient object management workflows. The current art has attempted unsuccessfully to solve these problems.
Collaboration can be as simple as a teleconference and or video conference system that has local and remote users of the system. Both systems have touch and speech inputs; however they are limited in regards to real-time data exchange, have limited data retention and multimedia digital collaboration features, and are not useful for large in-room collaboration implementations.
A more complex collaboration system will utilize an audio and or video teleconference system in conjunction with single or multiple touch enabled interfaces to form a large format collaboration display that can be shared through the network or utilized locally in the room as a standalone system.
In-room multiuser interactive small or large display collaboration systems have been implemented in several different form factor formats. Some of them attempt to allow multiple users to interact with the system in concurrent usage. These systems initially started out as single user input systems and through technological advancement have been improved to incorporate concurrent users entering information/data through the touch enabled user interfaces across multi-interactive touch screens connected as a single digital workspace.
These systems, while allowing multiple touch events at the same time to support multiple in room users, are still subject to object management work flow limitations with multiple touch events required to create, move, edit, and/or delete objects. These types of systems can support multiple users at the interactive touch surface however they are limited typically to touch only events which can be a multitude of touch events executed through a hierarchal nested command structure. This can create visual clutter and loss of touch context with multiple users assessing the system, as the system may not be able to differentiate asynchronous touch events in a seamless manner which decreases workflow efficiency and increases object management times.
To enhance the functionality of touch interaction systems, a speech recognition engine can be implemented to help minimize the user touch events on the interface system. Systems may see an increase in workflow efficiency by utilizing both modalities. Speech interfaces typically require a wake word or a touch event to activate. There can be advantages to an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) implementation through decreased touch events or possible eliminated touch events. Such systems are typically deployed as single user systems and have problems managing multiple concurrent users and may not be suitable for parallel work flows on an interactive touch enabled systems that can support multiple users.
If one user is interacting with the system and there is/are one or more other persons speaking, then the touch and speech interface could match a touch action at a wall with a speech event away from the interactive display that was not intended by the user.
As multimedia data objects become more complex and are maintained and referenced in groups and nested hierarchies, the inefficiencies in the current art become even more pronounced. As collaboration systems become larger and more complex, limitations in the current art become problematic in how multimedia is created and managed, especially under concurrent user situations.
The present invention is intended to overcome one or more of the problems discussed above.